Lesson 2 - 1789 – The impact of the French Revolution
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In Lesson 1 we saw that Switzerland before 1789 was not the democracy it is often claimed to be. Political power had become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of ruling families. Subject territories like Vaud had no political rights whatsoever. Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau and Voltaire had given reformers the ideas and the language to challenge the old order, and a series of attempted revolts throughout the 18th century showed that the pressure for change was real.
Yet when the French Revolution broke out in 1789, Switzerland did not immediately follow. This lesson asks why, and examines how, nine years later, the Ancien Régime finally collapsed. |
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Why Switzerland did not immediately follow France
In Matu 2 you studied the French Revolution in detail. You will remember that in France the revolution drew on a broad coalition of support: the middle classes and urban workers who resented the privileges of the nobility, the peasantry who were crushed by feudal dues and taxes, and radical politicians who had been shaped by Enlightenment ideas. Together these groups created a revolutionary force powerful enough to bring down the monarchy. Switzerland in 1789 looked superficially similar to France. It had a ruling elite that monopolised political power, a subject population that lacked basic rights, and a growing number of intellectuals who had been inspired by Enlightenment ideas. Yet the Swiss Ancien Régime proved far more resistant to revolution than its French counterpart, at least initially. There are several reasons for this.
In Matu 2 you studied the French Revolution in detail. You will remember that in France the revolution drew on a broad coalition of support: the middle classes and urban workers who resented the privileges of the nobility, the peasantry who were crushed by feudal dues and taxes, and radical politicians who had been shaped by Enlightenment ideas. Together these groups created a revolutionary force powerful enough to bring down the monarchy. Switzerland in 1789 looked superficially similar to France. It had a ruling elite that monopolised political power, a subject population that lacked basic rights, and a growing number of intellectuals who had been inspired by Enlightenment ideas. Yet the Swiss Ancien Régime proved far more resistant to revolution than its French counterpart, at least initially. There are several reasons for this.
The exiled intellectuals and La Harpe
If the Swiss Ancien Régime was strong enough to resist revolution from below, the challenge that eventually proved most dangerous came from a different direction: from Swiss intellectuals living in exile in France. In Matu 1 you saw how the American Revolution was led by an educated colonial elite, lawyers, landowners and merchants, rather than by the mass of the population. The same pattern is visible in Switzerland. The most important early challenge to the old order came not from the streets of Lausanne or Berne, but from Paris.
In 1790, a group of Swiss exiles founded the Club Helvétique in Paris, a political club dedicated to the cause of Swiss reform and independence. Its members had left Switzerland precisely because the Ancien Régime had no place for men of their ability and political ambition. In Paris they were free to read, write, debate and organise in ways that would have been impossible at home. The most influential of these exiles was Frédéric-César de La Harpe, a lawyer from Rolle in Vaud. What made La Harpe and his colleagues so dangerous to the Ancien Régime was not just their ideas, but their connections. They were not isolated dreamers. They had access to the most powerful government in Europe, the French Directory, and they were willing to use that access to bring about change in Switzerland by whatever means necessary.
If the Swiss Ancien Régime was strong enough to resist revolution from below, the challenge that eventually proved most dangerous came from a different direction: from Swiss intellectuals living in exile in France. In Matu 1 you saw how the American Revolution was led by an educated colonial elite, lawyers, landowners and merchants, rather than by the mass of the population. The same pattern is visible in Switzerland. The most important early challenge to the old order came not from the streets of Lausanne or Berne, but from Paris.
In 1790, a group of Swiss exiles founded the Club Helvétique in Paris, a political club dedicated to the cause of Swiss reform and independence. Its members had left Switzerland precisely because the Ancien Régime had no place for men of their ability and political ambition. In Paris they were free to read, write, debate and organise in ways that would have been impossible at home. The most influential of these exiles was Frédéric-César de La Harpe, a lawyer from Rolle in Vaud. What made La Harpe and his colleagues so dangerous to the Ancien Régime was not just their ideas, but their connections. They were not isolated dreamers. They had access to the most powerful government in Europe, the French Directory, and they were willing to use that access to bring about change in Switzerland by whatever means necessary.
De La Harpe Island, Rolle, Vaud.
Born in 1754, La Harpe was a brilliant student who gained his doctorate in law at the age of 20. He left Vaud in 1782 because of his opposition to Bernese rule. He eventually found employment at the court of Catherine the Great of Russia, where he was appointed tutor to her grandsons, including the future Tsar Alexander I of Russia. This relationship would prove decisive: when the great powers met at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to redraw the map of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, Alexander I's support helped ensure that Vaud retained its independence from Berne. La Harpe died in 1838 and was honoured by the dedication of an artificial island at Rolle, where a 13-metre obelisk was erected in his memory.
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Unrest inside Switzerland
While the exiled intellectuals organised in Paris, pressure for change was also building inside Switzerland itself. But it is important to understand what kind of pressure this was, because it was very different from the popular revolution that had swept France.
In Vaud, which had the strongest tradition of opposition to Bernese rule, there were genuine signs of revolutionary enthusiasm. Open-air political banquets were held to commemorate key events in the French Revolution. At Ouchy, just along the lake from where you are sitting now, as well as at Rolle and Vevey, demonstrators waved the tricolour flag and wore revolutionary caps of liberty. They made toasts to the revolution and to Vaudois independence, and petitioned the Berne government for tax cuts and political reform. (see below)
While the exiled intellectuals organised in Paris, pressure for change was also building inside Switzerland itself. But it is important to understand what kind of pressure this was, because it was very different from the popular revolution that had swept France.
In Vaud, which had the strongest tradition of opposition to Bernese rule, there were genuine signs of revolutionary enthusiasm. Open-air political banquets were held to commemorate key events in the French Revolution. At Ouchy, just along the lake from where you are sitting now, as well as at Rolle and Vevey, demonstrators waved the tricolour flag and wore revolutionary caps of liberty. They made toasts to the revolution and to Vaudois independence, and petitioned the Berne government for tax cuts and political reform. (see below)
Rolle, 15th July 1791
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Ouchy, 14th July 1791
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Berne's response was swift and typically counter-revolutionary. The government imposed censorship, banned political gatherings and condemned La Harpe and his brother in their absence. For a time, repression worked. But it could not hold back the tide indefinitely. Riots in Lausanne were followed by clashes in Neuchâtel and Geneva. By 1794 a revolutionary constitution had been established in Geneva, and by 1798 the canton had been formally annexed by France.
Further east, the nature of popular unrest was rather different and tells us something important about the limits of revolutionary feeling in Switzerland. In 1793 a revolt against taxes broke out at Gossau in St. Gallen. In 1794 peasants in Stäfa in Zurich demanded the restoration of political rights that had been granted in documents dating back to 1489 and 1532, and gradually eroded over the previous two centuries. These were not revolutionary demands in the French sense. The peasants of Gossau and Stäfa were not asking for a new political order. They were asking for old rights to be respected. This distinction matters: it suggests that outside Vaud, popular feeling in Switzerland was often conservative rather than revolutionary, looking backwards to a lost past rather than forwards to a new one.
In Matu 2 you studied the role of the sans-culottes, the urban workers of Paris who provided the revolutionary energy that drove events forward after 1792. Switzerland had no equivalent of the sans-culottes. Its towns were smaller, its urban working class less concentrated, and its political culture more fragmented. This is one of the key reasons why, unlike France, Switzerland could not generate a revolution from within.
When the French Revolution turned more radical after 1792, including the massacre of the Swiss Guards at the Tuileries palace in Paris, the conservative Swiss Confederacy broke with its traditional friendship with France. Although Switzerland remained officially neutral in the European wars that followed, it readily welcomed fleeing French aristocrats and continued to resist domestic reform. The Ancien Régime appeared, for the moment, to have survived.
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The French invasion of 1798
By late 1797 the situation had changed dramatically. In Paris, the French Directory had staged a coup, and one of its leaders, Reubell, opened discussions with La Harpe and Peter Ochs of Basel about the possibility of French military intervention in Switzerland. The motivations on each side were very different, and it is worth being precise about them. France was driven primarily by strategic and economic interests. Switzerland controlled the Alpine passes that connected France to Italy, where Napoleon Bonaparte had been conducting a brilliant military campaign since 1796. France wanted Switzerland's resources, its strategic territory and a clear route south. The ideals of the revolution were, at best, a secondary consideration. |
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Phrygian cap, cockade and seal stamp at the Bern Historical Museum.
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La Harpe and Ochs wanted something quite different. They had spent years campaigning for the political reforms that the Club Helvétique had been demanding: an end to the domination of the ruling families, equal rights for subject territories like Vaud, and a modern constitution based on Enlightenment principles. They saw French military power as the only realistic means of achieving what persuasion and domestic unrest had failed to deliver.
Their interests converged, and the result was an invasion. On 9 December 1797, La Harpe formally asked France to intervene in Berne to protect Vaud. By February 1798, French troops had occupied Mulhouse and Biel/Bienne. In Basel, patriots drew up a new constitution and established a first Swiss national assembly. In Vaud, patriots seized Château Chillon and proclaimed the Lemanic Republic. Across Switzerland, thousands of liberty trees were erected as symbols of revolutionary support, many of them crowned with a Tell Cap, a deliberate echo of Swiss national mythology that tried to connect the revolution to a much older tradition of Swiss independence. |
It is important to notice, however, that all of these steps were made possible by French military power. The Swiss population did not rise up and overthrow its rulers. The Confederation Diet, faced with the French advance, collapsed in disarray, deeply divided and unable to agree on any collective response. On 5 March 1798 French troops entered Berne and the old Confederation fell. By April the whole of Switzerland was under French occupation. The Ancien Régime had not been swept away by a popular revolution. It had been knocked over by a foreign army, with the help of a small group of Swiss exiles who had spent years waiting for exactly this moment.
In place of the old Confederation, the French established the Helvetic Republic, a new unified Swiss state modelled on the French Republic. For the first time in Swiss history, the country had a single central government, a written constitution, and a declaration of equal rights for all citizens. Feudalism was abolished. Subject territories like Vaud were granted the same political rights as the old cantons. On paper at least, it was everything that La Harpe and the Club Helvétique had been demanding for years.
In practice, the Helvetic Republic was fragile from the start. It was deeply unpopular in the conservative rural cantons, which resented the destruction of their traditional independence. It was financially dependent on France and politically unstable, lurching through a series of coups and constitutional crises in its short five-year existence. We will examine its rise and fall in detail in Lesson 6. For now, it is enough to know that the Swiss Ancien Régime was replaced not by a revolution from below, but by a French-imposed republic that satisfied some Swiss reformers, alienated many ordinary Swiss people, and ultimately depended on Napoleon Bonaparte for its survival. Before we continue the story of the Swiss revolution, we need to look at the career of the man who would shape it so decisively.
In place of the old Confederation, the French established the Helvetic Republic, a new unified Swiss state modelled on the French Republic. For the first time in Swiss history, the country had a single central government, a written constitution, and a declaration of equal rights for all citizens. Feudalism was abolished. Subject territories like Vaud were granted the same political rights as the old cantons. On paper at least, it was everything that La Harpe and the Club Helvétique had been demanding for years.
In practice, the Helvetic Republic was fragile from the start. It was deeply unpopular in the conservative rural cantons, which resented the destruction of their traditional independence. It was financially dependent on France and politically unstable, lurching through a series of coups and constitutional crises in its short five-year existence. We will examine its rise and fall in detail in Lesson 6. For now, it is enough to know that the Swiss Ancien Régime was replaced not by a revolution from below, but by a French-imposed republic that satisfied some Swiss reformers, alienated many ordinary Swiss people, and ultimately depended on Napoleon Bonaparte for its survival. Before we continue the story of the Swiss revolution, we need to look at the career of the man who would shape it so decisively.
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Activities
1. Watch the video opposite. It is the first in a series of dramatic reconstructions produced by Swiss TV that we will see on Swiss history.
2. Copy and complete the table below comparing the Swiss revolution of 1798 with the previous revolutions in America and France. If you copy and past the table into your OneNote you will be able to edit the empty column. Look to make two or three precise points rather than a single vague statement. |
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* The last two rows cannot be fully completed yet. The American Revolution did not end in 1776 and the French Revolution did not end in 1789. The degree of violence and outcome of the Swiss Revolution will take a few years (and an additional lesson) to fully play out. For now summarise the situation in 1798.
American Revolution (1776) |
French Revolution (1789) |
Swiss Revolution (1798) |
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What were the main causes? |
Colonial taxation without representation; Enlightenment ideas about rights and liberty; growing sense of a separate American identity |
Financial crisis and government bankruptcy; social inequality between the three Estates; the spread of Enlightenment ideas; a weak and indecisive king |
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Who led it? |
An educated colonial elite: lawyers, landowners and merchants such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington |
A mixture of middle-class politicians, radical journalists and urban activists; later, more extreme figures such as Robespierre took control |
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How much popular support was there? |
Mixed and divided: many colonists remained loyal to Britain; support was strongest among merchants and the educated classes in the towns |
Broad but unstable: peasants, urban workers and the middle classes were all involved at different times, but for very different reasons |
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What was the role of a foreign power? |
France provided crucial military and financial support to the American rebels, helping to tip the balance against Britain |
The American and Dutch revolutions inspired events in France; foreign powers later tried to crush the revolution by invading France |
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How violent was it?* |
A prolonged armed war of independence lasting eight years, with significant casualties on both sides |
Extremely violent: the Terror of 1793 to 1794 saw thousands executed; there was civil war in parts of France and repeated foreign invasion |
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What was the outcome?* |
An independent republic: the United States of America, governed by a new constitution based on Enlightenment principles |
A republic, then a radical republic under Robespierre, then the Directory, and eventually Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul |